Chapter 4

The sun beat down like a scourge. Men moved listlessly, driving themselves and their draft beasts. Fowl with panting beaks crouched in dusty bowls they fashioned in yard corners with their fanning wings. By flickering lantern light before the sun rose, the milking was completed. Ellen and Frankie were called upon to help at stripping the udders of the overabundant animals. The first streams on the pail bottom would whine high, the tone lowering as the pail filled, becoming deep and sonorous until foam ran down the pail sides. Then it was time to pour the milk through squares of flannel into ten-gallon cans that would be placed in the hewn-log water trough to cool, awaiting pickup by the dairy truck. In the half-dark the cows shuffled to pasture, Jack nipping their heels. Ellen would follow and close the gate. The sides of the bovines were oily, their breath fragrant, eyes moist. By early morning their stomachs would be distended with lush summer grass. Then throughout the sweltering day they would lie in the shade of the woods, chewing their cuds.

Anton and Sam would down a heavy breakfast, eat plates of eggs, Ellen cracking a dozen in the skillet for them. They reached for more coffee cake and bread and slabs of cold meat. After they ate they walked stolid to the fields, working corn rows with cultivator and team, mowing and raking and hauling in towering wagonloads of timothy and soybean and clover hay. They mended fence lines, repeatedly repaired harness and machine, sharpened saw, adz and ax, scythe, knife and cutting blades. They would throw from the fields the larger stones that cropped up under the bite of the share. Some fields had a rock outgrowth too large to be removed and it must stand bared and alone, machines and men circling it. At mid-morning and afternoon Frankie would search until she found the men in a field. She brought them a stone pitcher of water spiced with vinegar or a ginger stick. They mopped their rough-bristled faces with red kerchiefs, and drank. Sam was shirtless, his overall straps cutting his scrawny sunburned shoulders. Anton, powerful upper body covered to protect his freckled skin, had soaked his black sateen shirt with perspiration. His large arms shone red and glistening. The odor of sweat and earth rose strong about the men.

“Before God, Sam. Can’t figure how a little fart like you can put in a day’s work alongside me. Haw.”

“E’er watch a banty cock, Mester Gaddy? It’ll outlast your Barred Rock rooster any day of the week. Not so much of me to get wore out.”

The Gaddy women were laboring too, bringing in grapes and berries, beans and tomatoes by the pail and bushel. They canned and dried and sugared down the procession of largess that moved through the kitchen. There was more milk than the dairy would buy and Maria would skim the surplus for cream, send Ellen to trade the butter she churned. It was dirt cheap in this season. The remaining thin milk was thrown to squealing young pigs in wood troughs, foul-smelling in the reek of heat. Milk would sour swiftly, spots of yellow-green milkstone forming on the sides of pails. Ellen was directed to scrape it clean with a knife. Cheeses were made, some to cure amber and hard, hanging in the smokehouse, others to be stirred daily in stone crocks until the white curd turned yellow, the strong odor left, and it became bland. There was an abundance of cottage cheese with clabber cream and chopped green onions stirred in, or a seasoning of herbs that grew by the houseside. Maria had a lavish hand when it came to seasoning.

“I reckon I got such a heavy hand because my mam always was put to it to get enough for us to eat. She’d dig chicory roots for coffee and gather wild thyme and herbs. Pap cut lumber to sell to the railroad and worked tobacco. He saved e’er a penny he was paid and gave her none.” Maria sighed, “Mam found out I ate stones once. Seemed there was a satisfaction when the food was gone, to a white pebble, smooth like a bit of lard. I just recollect.”

Christian would come on Saturdays at dusk. Ellen met him covertly at the usual place and they ate a few lingering strawberries from the burned-out plants, then went to lie in the shade. He was boasting about the gigantic machine that Brinker had rented to harvest his wheat. “That combine’s some invention. Finished the whole field in a day. The bags are stacked in the crib. By heck, Brinker grows good wheat. We counted twenty grains on some ears. That’s forty bushel to the acre.” He was browned, his white teeth were flashing and he swaggered. “In the afternoon old lady Brinker drove the pickup out to the field with a freezer can of ice cream and three new-made cakes. Tell you, that woman’s my ideal of a wife. Spread a white cloth and brought silver and plates and a tin can of lemonade. We sure polished it off.” He reflected. “In the lemonade she had a chunk of ice floating.”

“Wish I had a piece of ice big as my head. Purely I do.” Ellen looked away, sighing in the stifled air scarce cooled by the setting of the sun. “It seems like all that’s to be garnered is trying to ruin before we can get hold of it to store it against the winter.”

Christian would stay with her only a short while because he was roused now while it was yet dark to begin the long day. Ellen spoke softly with him but when he laid his hand in the hollow below her throat or upon the dress over her thighs as he had done in the truck, she was afraid and made him laugh with her foolishness and coaxed him from his wont.

Sam Offut had failed to appear for milking one morning. Sam lived with his wife a short way down the road in a shack he owned; he would take his first two meals with the Gaddys and supper at his own table. Anton was hard put this morning, even with the help of the girls, to finish the chores on time, and sat down late to breakfast. As he was arising, the hired man appeared in the doorway, bleary-eyed, with an air of not having washed or slept. Sam was saying evenly as he took the chair across from Anton, “Ran my old ooman off last night. Those two were laying there still when I came home. On my bed. That whorish Eadie. I ne’er saw that particular peddler before. I could have killed them but I only ran them off.” He speared a slice of ham with the sharp knife. “I’ve doubted many a year now, since my youngens are grown and gone, if I be the daddy to more of the six than the first-born.”

Anton said shortly, “If you’ve got a mind after this, Sam, you can take supper here. Come on to the barn when you’re done.”

“I’m beholden.” Sam was eating like one famished.

During that day Ellen marveled at little Sam Offut, middle-aged, leathery-skinned, smoldering as he went through the days at his wife Eadie, bedding with other men. She wondered at how it took the white heat of August to kindle him into action.

When Jack was driving the cows in from the pasture one night, the white kid was missing. Penny and her young would always be in the lead in their anxiety to reach Ellen, who would have an evening tidbit set out for them in the woodshed—apple peels or bread crusts or carrots. Penny and the brown kid were standing in wait at the woodshed door. As pangs smote her, Ellen bolted down the lane to the field. The dog barked, running ahead. She searched the fence lines, from afar spied the bit of white, the buckling strangled in the fence where he had tried to slip through. He had hung himself. Ellen, extricating the stiffened body, met death for the first time intimately. She fought over her loss in the solitary field. “Oh you were my dear droll poppet that followed me.”

Ever in coming weeks when she thought of the clownish yeanling, tears came and her throat caught in anguish so complex it was nearly joy. She never forgot the death of the white kid. Its impact made a mark on her like scars she could point to on her body. “Here the sickle cut into my leg when I cleaned the path one day. And here that spotty hound bit my wrist when he had that fight with Jack.”

In her new-found anxiety for her two remaining goats, she kept them from the field, penning them in the barnyard and bringing them kitchen scraps and meadow grass. In their cleverness, though, they slipped through the fence to nibble in the garden and wander at will. Anton discovered them girdling bark from a stripling peach tree with their sharp teeth. He threatened, “To pasture with those tormented creatures where they belong. And if they be the cause of further botherment, girl, I’ll knock their heads in gladly and butcher them. Mind now.”

So Ellen went down the lane, Penny solemn at her heels, the doeling trotting last. Laughing at their comical air, the girl began to run. They snorted and sprang after her abandoned, striking their little hoofs sharply on the dry ground, unconscious of dignity or the heat of August. She left them blatting disconsolate at the meadow gate. In days to follow she would go to the barnyard fence, straining her eyes for a glimpse of the two small does amid the drove of cows.

There came the hour when Christian and Anton met. Though Ellen would slip out to see Christian when he walked down the road on his afternoon off, she had not mustered the boldness to bring him to the house. Anton never spoke of the young man though he knew Ellen met with him. One time he had watched them for a while from behind the oak by the berry patch. He saw his daughter talking while she switched flies with a branch of leaves, and the young man, brooding, leaned upon the fence. Anton could see nothing amiss and pulling on his pipe, went to listen to his favorite practicing at the piano.

Ellen had joined Christian in the orchard near the brook. Her goats finished browsing and lay back to back in the grass chewing their cuds in their rapid dainty way. Ellen was sitting on a fallen log. She wore an old dress that fitted her budding form too tightly. She laid in her hair white meadow rue and yellow oxeye daisies. She bowed her head to one side over the field flowers in her hands and knew, dreaming, how fair she was.

Christian lay on his stomach in the grass by her, catching her mood, knowing he’d never seen the girl so fetching. The lines of her long face were soft in a frame of flaxen hair. He spoke suddenly, “I got another letter from Mama.”

“Oh?”

“She mad again. My sister had a chance to get married and she turned it down. Mama says Rose wants bigger fish.”

“Fish?”

“Mr. Johnson’s only got a house and money. That’s not enough for my sister. He’d have to be a millionaire.”

“Well.”

“And she says Daddy gets pains nowadays. Has to lie down. He won’t see a doctor.”

“He’ll be all right, don’t you reckon?”

“He hates to pay a doctor bill.” He reached over to cover her bare foot with his palm. “You’re so sweet, Ellie.”

“Sweet as Miss Sabatha Withers, boy?” Anton was standing before them in the long grass. His overalls were ragged, the sleeves to his black shirt had been cut below the shoulders so his heavy biceps showed. His chin was thrust out, his body pulled erect in the habit of short men. A straw hat was settled upon his sparse hair. He was chewing a quid of tobacco.

Christian jumped to his feet. The two of them were the same height. “Hello, Mr. Gaddy. How do you do? I’m Christian Ay.”

“So hit seems.” The man spat, looked about as though searching for someone. “Hum. You didn’t bring your lady friend with you?”

“What’s that?”

Anton tilted his head. “And how be Dutchman Brinker these days? Haw. He still got the notion to stall his beasts on all the storeys of his barns? I heard he penned some shoats to fatten in his loft and they grew so grand and big they broke clean through the planking. Is that a fact?”

“I never heard of it, sir,” Christian was cold. “Mr. Brinker’s a fine farmer, I can tell you. But you got a nice place here, sir.” He was nodding, appeasing, as he flung his hand in a rude movement.

“This place was here, boy, being worked by my sir when Dutchman’s pa was setting on his ass in the old country.”

Ellen dropped her head, repeating over and again the Nicene Creed for her lover snared in Anton’s rough hand. Like an enchantress she evoked the only charm she knew. From whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

Anton squirted the brown juice again and was moving away. “Feeding is in an hour, girl,” he threw over his shoulder.

“All right, Pa.” She closed her eyes. Holy Virgin it had worked.

Christian eyed her, rebellious, scorn in his young face. “What a dirty crabby guy even if he is your old man. I’d just like to push that bristly smart-aleck face of his in. I can’t stand a bossy fellow like that.”

“Hush.” Ellen got up with sudden despair. “Now what’s he talking of Sabatha Withers for? Who’s she?”

“A girl I happen to know in Bethel. I’ll go see her or anyone I want.” He shouted it, striking at her father. And at himself for his intimidation. “And any time I want.”

A quarrel had uncoiled before they were aware. Ellen leaned back on the log, whispering, gray eyes slitted, “I don’t give a neinse. Run to that poor-trash thing.”

His short legs spread, his high cheekbones pale, he was storming, “And if I never see you or your stupid old man again, it’ll be too soon. I’m going to see someone who appreciates me.” He threw back his head and stalked away, cutting across to the road.

Ellen stayed awhile in the tall grass. As she wept the fury shed itself. Bereft, she went up the hill through the field where the boar was now penned. Her goats and Jack were trailing after. The old red boar regarded her from a little distance, his distrust palpable. “There’s a mean hog, Jack,” she whispered.

She neared the barnyard and heard Anton, “Hitch Blue and get him out here, Sam.” A spotted heifer was stretched neat a group of slender walnuts, bawling intermittently. Anton was bent over her. She had been due to bear her calf any day, was a daughter of his best milker, a pride to him. While Ellen watched, her hand resting on the yard gate, Sam was running from the barn, leading Blueberry. The harness jingled as the buckskin came at a trot. “Whaw,” Sam cried roughly.

The two conferred. The horse waited on them, head down, hipshot, a hind leg at rest on the tip of the hoof. They hitched the tugs to a rope looped about the head of the unborn calf just within the dam. Anton drove the horse forward slowly, dragging the cow. Then he halted, took off his straw hat, scratching his head. “Hell, hit’s drying out. I vow, Sam, the first one’s always too tight. It’s like the wine corks in the kegs. Once get them started and they come out easy. Let’s try those trees o’er there, now. Gee-whup.” Again the traces tightened and the tired young cow was hauled through stones and red dust in the broil of heat. They untied the lines, rehitched them through a gap between two walnut trunks. “Haw-there,” ordered Anton and while the beast bellowed, wedged upon the tree boles, her calf was torn from her womb, limp and wet.

Slipping through the gate, Ellen skirted the barnyard and hurried to the house. She changed her dress and spoke quietly to Maria, “Spotty had her calf. Pa had to take it from her. It’s a pretty one.” She returned, saw the heifer was on her feet, placenta hanging. Delicate head down, tossing her well-formed tiny horns, she guarded the calf she licked nervously.

That night the heat lifted slightly. Ellen was wakeful within her loft-room. She slipped downstairs into the sultry dark. Barefoot, she walked with Jack to the woodshed, freeing Penny and Rhodie. They wandered across the fields, through gates to the orchard. She sat on the log again. In the night sky the blue whiskers of cloud were backing off. And the moon in absolute radiance was speeding forth. There was not a sound anywhere.

As the year moved on, the heat abated and winds started out of nowhere, rushing. Christian stayed away from Ellen over two long Saturdays. Then one evening she was standing beyond the low garden wall watching the bees work the hives. He appeared, jaunty in a blue shirt freshly pressed by Brinker’s wife, his blond hair damp, comb-marked. “Hey, Ellie. A penny for your thoughts.”

“Not wasting them on you, I’ll say.” Her temper shifted in her and she colored. “I’m thinking Sam will be robbing the poor bees soon.”

“Come on, take a walk with me, Ellie. Down to the woods. Say, you’re blushing.” He grinned.

“Go to your true love in Bethel.”

“No.” His blue eyes were bold. “I broke off with that one.” They were starting down the hill. When out of sight of the house, he took her hand.

She pulled away, unwilling. “I don’t care for you.” But in time he won her from her anger and it was with Ellen as though the quarrel had never been.

They were hand in hand in the dry reeds by the pond where the lone duck was paddling in circles. He was vowing strongly, “I’ve left Sabatha Withers for good, Ellie.”

“Well.”

“She’s cheap.” He laughed angry, for the young fires lay hot in him still. “You never have seen Brinker’s place, Ellie.”

“No. I’ve heard tell he’s got fancy barns.”

“You’d get a kick out of them. Want to go there next week? I could show you Baker, that Belgian stud. He’s a sight. Like I said, he beats anything I ever saw.”

“I’ll come, then.”

“Kiss me, Ellie.”

“Listen at that sound, Christian.” The faint cry of geese was audible, “Kwonk, honk, honk, kwonk.” Far above the earth the long-necked wild birds were heading for northern nest grounds, their massive bodies two wavering lines of dots making the letter V. The call of the leaders sounded shrill, and as they moved overhead there came the deep responses of the rear guards. It seemed to Ellen that she had no desire for the way of the roused child-man beside her. Ahead stretched the long filament of her life; she was pierced by the pain of the earthbound that is made up of longings. She was voiced vicarious from the throats of the wild birds. She turned to Christian, dissatisfied. Their eyes were almost on a level; she was crying, intense, “Don’t you wish you were that leader?”

“Say, I’d rather be me than some bird.” He laughed at her, pressed her hand. “Come. Kiss me.”

In the last week of September Ellen slipped down Sweetincreek Road to where Christian had brought the truck around. The Brinker family were in Bethel doing their weekly buying, and Christian acutely felt his proprietorship. He drove up his employer’s graveled drive and into the huge garage. He led her to the farm buildings, proud. “Take a look.”

The great white barn was trimmed in red, a gigantic portrait of a black-and-white Holstein bull had been painted across the expanse of one side. There was an iron bull weather vane centered on the roof; it wheeled with the breeze. “I ne’er saw such furbelowing, Christian.”

“This isn’t the half of it.”

In the shed just off the chicken house he was showing her round-bellied puppies. She fondled them while the gentle bitch watched alert-eyed from a straw bed. “Nothing smells as soft as a little whelp, Christian.”

He was pointing to a miniature windmill, and to bantam chickens and white and gray rabbits in screened hutches. Out in the pasture were shining Belgian mares. Ellen was stroking their sleek faces. Christian caught a cobby black filly by the halter and led her to the girl. “This one’s Doll. She’s pedigreed. She’s to be bred to Baker as soon as she comes in heat. Mr. Brinker’s ordered it. We’ve been watching out for her.”

“Look at those dark eyes, Christian. Here, Doll.” Ellen was offering a handful of oats. But the mare threw up her head, nickering toward the farm buildings. There was a responding whinny from the distance. The mare swished her tail, holding it high.

Christian’s eyes kindled. “You know, Ellie, I think she’s in season. Let’s try her. See if she’ll take him.”

“You’d best wait for Mester Brinker.”

“You’re scared.”

“I’m not. Only I’d wait. If she’s a thoroughbred, he’d lay the blame to you should it go amiss.”

The mare was shaking her head so the halter rings jangled; she cried again, shrilly. Christian was opening the gate. “Come on, Ellie. Look, you want to ride her down the lane? I’ll lift you to her back.”

“You dassn’t ride her. Sam told me,” she said, dallying, “that a mare in the heat mustn’t be ridden till she’s been bred.”

“All right. But come on,” he urged. He led the prancing Doll through the gate and down the lane toward the stallion’s paddock. Ellen was following, reluctant. “You hold her while I lock up Baker,” he called.

She came to take the mare’s headstall from him. “Well.”

At the yard the huge seed-horse was observing them, restive, aware of their business. He squealed, striking at the fence bars with his huge hoofs. Christian laughed, catching Ellen’s eye. “What you scared of, honey? I can handle him easy.”

“So what?” she whispered to the mare, who was tossing her mane, jerking.

Christian had skillfully snared the halter of the red roan beast and secured him in his stall. “Turn her in the lot now, Ellie,” he was shouting.

But she tarried and cried, “I’ll wait for you in the truck.”

“Come on, turn her in. It’s only Baker.” He was flushed and he laughed at her from the half door of the stable.

Ellen loosed the black mare in the paddock where she curved her neck and cantered like a gust of wind. The stallion could be heard clamoring angrily, rearing and knocking the walls. Christian turned the handle of the stall door to release him, and then vaulted the fence. He came to stand with Ellen. “Why did you want to go to the truck?”

The magnificent horse was trotting out, neighing. He minced past the filly who was dwarfed by his size. He lifted his shaggy fetlocks high without effort and his tawny mane streaked. He wheeled, snuffed noisily at her neck, bit it softly and pawed it in a dynamic graceful gesture. Then he leaped the mare, falling on his side with powerful elegance. He recovered, mounted her again. His beauty was like a thunderous battle, his piercing voice rose and fell on the stilled air, waking the valleys of the farm, rushing through tree boughs.

Christian was turning, urgent, “Ellie?”

“Let’s go to the truck, Christian. I’m going to wait there.” She turned.

He grasped her arm. “Come on, Ellie.”

“No, Christian.”

He was shoving her under the lean-to by the stable where summer wheat straw was stacked for the stallion’s bedding. He was struggling with his clothing, bruising her. The coolness dwelled in the shadows there, it was quiet and made itself separate from the noise in the dust of the lot outside. His youth was adamant and awkward, his knee entreated silent between her virgin thighs.

Surprised, she was fighting. “Liar,” she gritted.

He held her in the straw. “You’ve led me on, Ellie. I won’t wait.” His arms were muscled from a hard summer, his blood thrusting purposed.

She had read of Absalom, how none was so much praised as he for his perfection. From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. So the Bible said, and so she had dreamed of Christian moving in a lawful pattern she laid. She was unprepared for the painful shattering of it, betrayed. “No,” she was weeping. “Liar.” It whistled in the coolness against the pant of him.

“I have to, honey. Take it easy. I’ll be careful. I can’t wait.” His voice was blurred and hot, stabbing, overridden by the tramping hoofs and shrill neighs like a storm without.

Ellen closed her eyes. They ran tears because of the hurt there was, the receding terror.

He spoke softly then, “Don’t cry.”

“Go away.”

He stood up and went into the sun. He led Doll back to the pasture, threw a forkful of hay to Baker who was docile now, obedient. After a while he came back and looked at Ellen. “Don’t be mad.”

She wouldn’t hear him.

“Come on, Ellie. We’ve got to get back.”

She was rising, brushing back her hair. He leaned toward her, tender, and pulled a straw caught in the yellow strands. She struck, savage, at his fingers. In the truck seat she remained unspeaking until he reached for her hand. Then she unleashed at him, injured, “You think I’m that Sabatha Withers. I ne’er want to see you again. Hear?”

Christian was resting his elbow on the window; he looked down the road. He gunned the truck so dust eddies rose like a whirlwind in the wake. He slammed the brakes on the road just above the Gaddy entrance. “Come on, Ellie. I’m sorry. Don’t be mad. Please.”

But she hurled the cab door shut. Her head was high. For her world that had had a sort of ingenuous beauty had disappeared. And it was never the same again.